Last month, I wrote about Hewlett-Packard’s great customer service. They’re still among the best I’ve encountered … but …

The other day, I get the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. I recover. I back up my data. The BSoD returns several hours later. I can’t recover. I call HP. It’s not good. Not at all. First came the diagnosis: crashed hard drive or fried motherboard. Lovely. Well, at least it’s still under warranty. Then came the sales pitch: “Had your machine not been under warranty, this service would cost you at least $300. Would you like to extend your warranty?”

Excuse me?!

I’m this close to frantic. My primary work computer is hosed and about to be FedExed 3,000 miles away for service. Yeah, I backed up my data, but Lord knows what I might have lost anyway. Then there’s the whole p.i.a. of reconfiguring all my programs when I get it back. Lost time. Lost productivity. Lost dollars. Maximum stress. Maximum aggravation. Yeah, great time to make a sales pitch.

Memo to HP’s customer service managers: You might want to rethink this particular upsell strategy.

Sheesh.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff.